Citations
from Major Humanities Indices

This appendix is a list of articles cited in some of the major indices of
humanities journals. It is not an exhaustive list of articles published on the
Bahá'í Faith, for it is limited to: (1) articles published within the past two
and a half decades; (2) articles found in those journals or magazines commonly
available in public and college libraries; (3) articles referenced under the
keywords Bahai, Bahaism, Bahá'u'lláh, Bábí,
and
Bábísm. It does, however, list all articles (some short book reviews
have been excluded) cited in these sources. It is for the first two of these
reasons that the researcher might find it helpful--that is, the articles
contained herein are precisely those most easily accessible.

More complete
bibliographies can be found by consulting the Index Islamicus and
William Collins' Bibliography of English-Language Works on the Bábí and
Bahá'í Faiths 1844-1985, the Arts and Humanities Citation Index,
and
the Social Sciences Citation Index. The Bahá'í Studies Bulletin,
6.2-3 (Feb. 1992) includes an appendix listing citations from AHCI and other
academic indices, and many of the later issues of the Bulletin list
addenda to Collins' Bibliography. Further, Seena Fazel has demonstrated
in "Some Observations Regarding Bibliographic Citations in Non-Bahá'í
Periodicals and the Academic Study of the Bahá'í Faith," in
Bahá'í Studies
Bulletin, 6.2-3 (Feb. 1992), and "The Bahá'í Faith and Academic Journals,"
in Bahá'í Studies Review, 3.2 (1994), that humanities indices, including
AHCI and SSCI, are not always wholly accurate or consistent about citing Bahá'í
materials.

Note: to repeat, the above listing only includes common
non-academic articles. More complete listings can be found by consulting the Index
Islamicus, William Collins' Bibliography of English-Language Works on the
Bábí and Bahá'í Faiths 1844-1985, the Arts and Humanities
Citation Index (AHCI), and the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI).

This Resource Guide is designed largely to assist in the creation of introductory seminars or
courses on the Bahá'í Faith. Many textbooks that a teacher would assign in such a
course either do not mention the Bahá'í Faith or offer misleading or even
incorrect presentations of it (e.g. describing it as a heretical sect of Islám). Seena Fazel
describes various treatments of the Faith in encyclopedias in his "The Bahá'í
Faith Seen Through the Eyes of Major Encyclopedias," in Journal of Bahá'í
Studies, 4:3 (Sept-Dec 1991). More recently, Paul D. Numrich examined the treatment of
the Bahá'í Faith in some of these textbooks, tracing the development of the
presentation in subsequent editions of a few, in "The Bahá'í Faith in World
Religions Textbooks," in World Order 25:1 (Fall 1993).

Here are listed the most common introductory textbooks and dictionaries on the
world's religions, as well as some major encyclopedias, organized by the degree to which they
include a useful presentation of the Bahá'í Faith. Since the focus of this
bibliography is books more than authors, they are alphabetized by title. Parenthetical notes
follow most entries.

** Introductory religion textbooks, encyclopedias, and dictionaries which include a
complete, useful, and accurate presentation of the Faith

Encyclopaedia Iranica. Ed. Ehsan Yarshater. London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985-. (Without doubt the encyclopedia containing the most complete
and most numerous entries on the Faith, its history, and its major personages. Articles by a
veritable who's who of Bahá'í academics on a good variety of subjects, from
Azalís to Cosmology, Bahá'í.)Encyclopedia of Islam. Ed. H. Gibb et al. London: Luzac & Co., 1960.
(Accurate articles but short.)Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics. Ed. James Hastings. New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1909. (Though of course outdated, the entries contained are by
Browne and are classics.)A Handbook of Living Religions. Ed. John R. Hinnells. London:
Penguin Books, 1985. (The article contained here is lengthy [23 pages] and accurate . . .)Religions of the World. Lewis M. Hopfe. New York: Macmillan
Publishing Company, 1987. (This discussion of the Faith is relatively complete and well-
written, though at ten pages it is a little too abbreviated.)World Faiths. S. A. Nigosian. New York: St. Martins Press, 1994.
(Probably the most complete treatment of the Bahá'í Faith in any introductory
textbook. Save for a few minor inaccuracies the presentation is quite reliable.)

** Introductory religion textbooks and dictionaries which include a useful and accurate
but short presentation of the Faith

America's Alternative Religions. Ed. Timothy Miller.
Albany: SUNY Press, 1995. (Article on the Faith, "The American Bahá'í
Community in the Nineties," is good but too specific to use as a general introductory text.)Encyclopedia Britannica. Chicago: William Benton, Publisher,
1979. (Good but insufficient entries for an encyclopedia of this size.)Encyclopedia of Religion. Ed. Mircea Eliade. New York: Macmillan
Publishing Company, 1987. (The entries, by Alessandro Bausani, are good but noticeably short
for this, the definitive encylopedia of religion.)Living Religions. Mary Pat Fisher. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice
Hall, 1994. (Though only two pages long, this section is well-written and sympathetic.)The Religious Experience of Mankind. Ninian Smart. New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1984. (Well-written and accurate but only two pages long.)A Sourcebook for Earth's Community of Religions. Ed. Joel
Beversluis. New York: CoNexus Press, 1995. Also published as Sourcebook for the Community
of Religions, A. Ed. Joel Beversluis. Chicago: The Council for a Parliament of the World's
Religions, 1993. (This book consists of a series of brief overviews, and the section on the Faith
provides a good explnation of basic Bahá'í history and teachings. However, it and
the other summaries are too short to use as effective introductions.)World Religions. Warren Matthews. St. Paul: West Publishing,
1991. (Matthews' discussion of the Faith, though not very long, contains a good amount of detail
on the Faith's history and is fairly presented.)World Religions: Western Traditions. Ed. Willard G. Oxtoby.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. (The section on the Bahá'í Faith, pp.
500-503, is well-written and useful, suffering only from brevity.)The World's Religions. Ed. Peter Clarke. London: Reader's Digest,
1993. (Small introduction on p.205, under the "Islamic" section.)The World's Religions. Ninian Smart. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:
Prentice Hall, 1989. (Like Smart's The Religious Experience of Mankind, presentation is
accurate and fair but only two pages long.)

** Introductory religion textbooks, encyclopedias, and dictionaries which include a
relatively accurate but dated or marginally useful presentation of the Faith

The Encyclopedia Americana. Danbury, Connecticut:
Grolier Incorporated, 1992. (Articles are out of date and contain the consequent inaccuracies,
but are otherwise complete summaries.)History of the World's Religions. David S. and John B. Noss. New
York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1990. (An otherwise very respectable textbook, its
discussion of the Faith is brief and often misleading.)Larouse Dictionary of Beliefs and Religions. (Though suffering
from a bad writing style and minor errors, these entries are sufficiently long and detailed to
include in this section.)

** Introductory religion textbooks and dictionaries which includea poor, partial, or
inaccurate presentation of the Faith

Academic American Encyclopedia. Danbury,
Connecticut: Grolier Incorporated,1995. (Entries are mostly accurate but too short to be of
use.Concise Encyclopedia of Islam. (Contains numerous errors.)The Dictionary of Bible and Religion. Gen. Ed. William H. Gentz.
Nashville: Parthenon Press, 1986. (Sympathetic but brief and not well-written.)The Harper Collins Dictionary of Religion. Jonathon Z. Smith, ed.
San Francisco: Harper Collins Publishers, 1995. (Relatively complete entries, but containing
serious and even humorous errors.)Many People, Many Faiths. Robert S. Ellwood. Englewood Cliffs,
N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1992. (Brief mention of the Faith as a new religious movement, on
p.387.)A New Dictionary of Religions. John R. Hinnells, ed. Oxford:
Penguin Books Ltd. 1995. (Fairly accurate but short.)Religious Worlds: The Comparative Study of Religion. William E.
Paden. Boston: Beacon Press, 1988. (Accurate but minimal entry.)Ways to the Center: An Introduction to World Religions. Denise and
John T. Carmody. Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1993. (Contains only
one small paragraph on the Faith, but includes a large picture of the Shrine of the
Báb.)World Religions: An Introduction. Charles R. Monroe. Amherst:
Prometheus Books, 1995. (Minimal entry.)The World's Religions. Huston Smith. San Francisco: Harper Collins
Publishers, 1991. (Though otherwise one of the very best introductory texts on world
religions, this book makes only one mention of the Faith.)

** Introductory religion textbooks and dictionares which make no mention of the
Faith